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Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce.. Looks like another Columbia Burger King has closed shop. This one was on Devine Street, just before it intersects in a triangle with Fort Jackson Boulevard and Cross Hill Road. It's certainly a less tony section than the bulk of Devine, and a number of businesses have come and gone in the general area over the years. It is, however, also just across from where the upscale Whole Foods will be going into the former Family Mart / Kroger, so it will be interesting to see what eventually ends up here. Or, it could just be those poor registers saying "Cannot Locate Fileserver" for years..

(Hat tip to commenter Frank)

UPDATE 17 April 2013 -- As reported in the comments, this place is being demolished:

14 April 2013:

15 April 2013:

16 April 2013:

UPDATE 8 October 2013 -- Work on the PDQ is ongoing:

UPDATE 11 February 2014 -- The signage for PDQ is up, and the building is well underway:

This is one of the ones that Hinton closed after a fallout with BK Corporate that became a Brandi, Inc. BK. It was one of the last ones to come back as a Brandi, Inc. BK in ≈2002/03 timeframe. I was in high school at the time and a friend of mine was going to Dreher at the time as well and we were hoping it would come back...

No telling what will come of this property yet but maybe something will come along with the new Whole Foods coming soon to the former Kroger at what is going to be called Cross Hill Market

With both A&W's being burned, I think it was an "inside" job to collect on insurance..or so I was told by one of the original managers that used to run both of them in the 60's. I dont remember A&W all that well for some reason.

There was a vets office on the other side of the Hess, I believe it was Dr. Cheatham's, but couldn't swear to that. I do remember kennels associated with that house, but never saw dogs there, at least not in the 83-4 timeframe when I occasionally had lunch there.

It does seem fishy that they both burned. I remember crying when the one that the BK replaced burned because my granddad took me there for root beer floats when I was really little. All I could think of was no more root beer floats with granddad.

@Del, my memory is that the place with Pappa, Mama and Baby burgers was "Family Burger". There was one on US-1 in Camden on the right a bit east of the train station. We used to stop there all the time on our way to Hartsville even though the guy who usually took our orders had a hearing aid and often got them wrong ;-).

Give Virgil's Root Beer a try. You can usually get it locally at Earthfare (and other stores, usually not in the regular drink aisle): Real sugar and none of the after-taste of other root beers. I don't drink anything sweet often, but that's good stuff every now and then, especially on a hot day.

There used to be a sign in the window near the door that read "No Photography." So it's ironic that someone went to photograph the place after it closed. As a photographer myself, I always wanted to shoot the place from off property, then e-mail the pics to management.

Get your camera, ted! Yesterday there was one of those big grabber demolition things in the parking lot and all the booths etc have already been removed. I bet they are going to knock the place down Monday morning.

It's quite odd. They had the excavator or whatever you call it there for, I think, about two days, only one of which was it active. It's like they kind of lost interest in tearing it down after that first day..